This is Broken

Buttons are Fragile (via lot49a)

Pedestrian crosswalk buttons face an uphill usability battle. Constrained by the need to respect the rest of traffic flow, there’s no obvious causal relationship between pressing the button and an event that happens in the world.

Sometimes the light changes, sometimes it waits and then changes, sometimes it changes even if you don’t press the button. There is a running debate among my friends as to whether the buttons have any function at all.

On top of that, they face a whole lot of wear and tear from both legitimate use, frustrated use, and outright vandalism.

This button, outside Ottawa’s City Hall, seems to have been designed by someone terrified that it might end up in a riot zone. It has no moving parts - the metal plate you can see is fixed firmly in place. Touching it results in … nothing.

There is no press or click, no light comes on, no sound is made and the street light certainly doesn’t change on command. Touching the button resulted in no feedback whatsoever to indicate that the thing was working. Maybe it wasn’t.